I spent the weekend at Num Ti Jah Lodge in Banff National Park, getting the final details ironed out for my upcoming Rocky Mountain Workshop and went for a drive along the David Thompson Highway on Friday evening. This time of year, you generally can’t drive more than 10 KM on the eastern slopes of the Rockies without seeing a bear in the ditch and it’s been a long time since I even bothered to stop for a black bear. A grizzly on the other hand, is a different matter. In spite of the fact that statistically, there’s lots of them out there, not many ever seem to show themselves so, when a rare opportunity presents itself, it’s time to break out the big glass. I wish I could say I shot this with a 16mm but, I’m not that stupid or brave. I had a half hour alone with this one and kept a respectable 100 yard distance between us while I handheld a 500mm.

This is was a nice break from commercial shooting or the hectic agenda of a travel assignment and a weekend in the mountains always serves to remind me how beautiful the Canadian Rockies are.

We’re running a photo contest here at onewordphotography so, submit your best images for prizes amounting to tens of dollars! All submissions become property of onewordphotography to sell, resell or assign rights as i see fit with no credit or compensation to you ever, never, not a dime….. Oh, wait, I’m saving that post for another day. Nevermind.

Actually, I do want readers to submit business related questions. In a future post, I’m going to address your questions on growing your business, selling your work or dealing with a difficult client. So, unless you’re Chase Jarvis, a Trustafarian , or just plain lazy, email your questions about the business of photography HERE and I’ll address them in a future post. If you want to be anonymous, let me know and I won’t include a link to your site.

And remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don’t ask enough questions.

I’ve avoided anything Flickr now for a long time. When it first came on the radar, I had a look at it and it was basically a photo sharing site for amateurs. I also hated the interface (still do) because only a 12 year old could understand it. Of course, thanks to amateur enthusiasts, it’s now the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The enthusiasts like sharing pics with friends and family, the interface is easy for them to use and understand, and like most social networking sites, they’ve invested a lot of time in building up an online community of like minded friends. So, they certainly don’t want to see any changes.

On the pro side, full time photographers are now starting to see some of the benefits of Flickr and, in spite of the fact that it’s like the wild west, where everyone plays fast and loose with the intellectual property of others, there’s a ton of traffic going on that might be directed to your your site if you do even a little flickerring (?). Combined with lots of rumors and stories of photographers getting huge budget, primo assignments or advertising image buys through Flickr searches, it’s pretty compelling to at least look into what it’s all about.

I set up a page HERE, two weeks ago, put up a paltry 250 images and BAM! there’s suddenly a ton of traffic I had never had before. To give you some sort of idea, my Flickr page now comes back as the number one result if you Google certain variations of “oil and gas photographer”. Number one in Google! In two weeks! Perhaps an even better indicator is that I’ve already tracked down five, count ‘em, five different thefts of my work where other sites are using my images, even with the copyright watermark across the front of ‘em, without paying me. Five thefts in two weeks, from a batch of 250 images. That’s a lot of traffic.

What I mean by the “elephant in the room” comment is that, at present, Flickr is essentially free (barring an annual pittance required to upgrade to a Pro account) and there is no advertising. It’s got to be the category killer in terms of traffic and image searches and I’d venture to say that it gets more traffic than Getty and Corbis combined. It’s got a cult following that would make Jim Jones drool Kool Aid and has a shocking depth of imagery in terms of both quality and quantity. Users both pro and amateur are cruising along happily but, if you don’t think someone on the board of directors is rubbing their grubby hands together and chuckling, you need to get your head outta the sand.

It seems to me that, Flickr, as a stand alone asset, could be worth a staggering amount of money. Depending on what happens with the pending Microsoft/Google/Yahoo orgy, I’ll eat my hat if this thing doesn’t get spun off and monetized in the next 12 months.

What’s all this mean to you, the flickeree? Well, probably not much. You’ll either eventually have to pay, put up with advertising or, give up something of value to keep using the site. Which is fair and fine, they’re running a business and offering a service after all. Sure, the villagers will be breaking out the torches and pitchforks when it’s first announced that they have to pay to use Flickr but, once the dust settles and Lucy decides to take down the pics of her Hannah Montana toothbrush collection and upload them onto the next big thing for free, Flickr could turn into a goliath in terms of photo marketing for both pros and amateurs alike. Sorta like what Getty/iStock is trying to do now, but without the benefit of 5 years of viral marketing.

If and when this happens, the gap between pro photographer and hobbyist could vanish altogether.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about how to market to potential photo buyers. Most specifically to art directors and photo editors in the magazine business. Blogs and forums are jammed with photo editors complaining that they get too much email, too many postcards, too many phone calls etc. On the flip side, there’s an equal number of photographers bitching about the need to send out countless spam, the cost of printing cards and promos, the impossibility of getting a PE on the phone and the low, low response rate said efforts garner.

I think a lot of factors have come together over the past few years to create something of a perfect storm (sorry!) in photo marketing. First, bulk email is now cheaper and easier than ever. Tracking that campaign is simple, quick and instantly gratifying. As well, the number of people who sell lists, and the currency of those lists has grown exponentially in the last few years. Combined with the fact that you can find out the shoe size of a photo editor at some obscure trade magazine in Hong Kong in less than .002 seconds by googling them, means that reaching out and touching someone has never been easier.

All of this means, of course, that photographers are making more noise than ever in the marketplace. And getting noticed above the din is harder than ever. Which means you have to make even more noise to get noticed. And so on, and so on, and so on. As a result, there’s been a bit of backlash in the community in terms of “naming and shaming” photographers who email promos and links willy nilly. However, I don’t think it’ll end any time soon. The reality is, this type of marketing gets work. Most PE’s see sorting through promos and emails as part of the job of ferreting out good work, new blood or interesting viewpoints to illustrate pieces with. Most probably resent the never ending stream, I know I would, but, it’s part of the gig. Frankly, the only salespeople I ever wanna see on my doorstep are the Girl Guides, and only when they’re selling those chocolate mint cookies but, as a homeowner, with a front door and a doorbell, I have to put up with countless other peddlers to get the minty deliciousness.

One problem we all face of course, is the mixed message. Ask 100 photo buyers “what is the best way to market my work to you and get picked for a job” and you’ll get 103 different answers. “I love email”, “I hate email”, “send me a postcard”, “save the trees”, “phone calls only, no mail”, “NEVER call me” etc. etc. Faced with this, how are you supposed to know what’s the best way? You can’t! There is no best way. The best way is the way that works for you, gets you work and has a return on investment that means at the end of the year, your costs of marketing created more than enough new work to pay for itself. Magazines put 50 “please subscribe” cards in every magazine so that they’ll fall everywhere each and every time you pick it up, relentlessly showering you with paper until you give in, pick one up, fill it out and send it in. If it took 51 to get enough subscriptions to pay for the marketing and generate a profit, they’s put 51 in. If it took only 2, that’s all you’d see.

Heather Morton has some really great advice HERE about how to market to people like her. It’s a well rounded, considered suggestion and is probably as good a guide as you’ll ever get to marketing your work.

I recently noted this

Which reminded me of this 

Seems that we’ve run out of ideas when it comes to cover imagery.

Discuss

OK, if you’re younger, smarter and hipper than me, you already know about this because, well, you’re younger, smarter, hipper and probably spend 23 hours a day online but, I just found this and frankly, I laughed so hard I think I pulled a muscle in my neck. Ouch.

Since I’ve bored you with a couple of posts in a row about selling and business, enjoy this

There’s about ten of them and they’re on the right side of the page, the interface is way too busy for me but hey, I’m not young, hip or particularly smart. Figure it out for yourself.

Enjoy

Last post, I talked a bit about the marketing side of what I do as a photographer to stay in front of potential clients. I’d like to go a little deeper now and talk about where I get leads from. Once you condition yourself to be on the lookout for new clients, it’s amazing how you start to notice more and more just how many potential clients there are out there. Kinda like having a cold sore. It doesn’t really bother you until someone helpfully points it out, then you can’t forget about it the rest of the day.

For editorial clients, I buy lists from Adbase or Agency Access, subscribe to something called Travelwriters, which has a listing of travel publications and, since I spend lots of time in airports, basically go through the magazine racks searching for publications my work might be suited for, hoarding in flight magazines, stealing the regional magazines from hotels and tearing out the masthead pages of just about anything that crosses my path. On a recent job in Mexico, my fixer watched, wide eyed, while I tore out the mast head pages of a magazine on the coffee table in the reception are of a Hacienda owned by a large US hotel chain. He laughed and shook his head, I shrugged and pocketed the name and mailing address of someone potentially really interested in my images of their resort.

For end user commercial clients, the sources of leads are around you all day. From the simple deli in your neighborhood to the corporate oil and gas client in that office tower downtown. Starting with small potential, I look at every piece of junk mail that lands in my mailbox. Most of them have crap photography but, some have some pretty good stuff. Call the advertiser and ask where the photography comes from. Follow that thread until you find the person who makes the call on who shoots what. Local and regional magazines, here’s what I’d call medium potential because they’re spending more money to buy pages in these publications so, they should also be looking to get the best photography they can afford. Read every single one, every month. Make a note of who’s advertising, what they do for imagery and put them on a list to call.

Your local Chamber of Commerce is a place you should visit and join. Joining usually gets you a membership list which is a great list of leads for you to add to your master target list. Don’t scratch anyone off the list until you’ve called them at least once and they’ve told you “we’ve never hired a photographer for anything, ever and, we never will,, ever”. When I was starting out, I did just this and one of the places I called was a local house cleaning company. I figured this was a waste of time but, they said “I’m glad you called, matter of fact, we have an annual employee appreciation day and we need an event photographer this year”. I only do event photography now for exiting clients but, it’s amazing how many companies have annual events they hire a shooter for, even the small companies.

Hit the library, ask the librarian what a SIC code is (it stands for standard industrial classification) and then ask where you can get a print out of all companies in your region for all SIC codes. This should give you a complete list of almost every company in the geographic region you specified, classified by the type of business they’re in and include address and some contact information. Depending on the size of region you’re in, this might be a pretty big document so, go through the list and “cherry pick”. Start by pulling out the names of companies that you recognize. Contact them and keep contacting them. Every time you drop one from the list (”all our customers are blind, we don’t need photography”), pull a new one from the SIC code list and add them in place of the blind guys.

I have a million more ideas on how to grow your business but, as they say in sales, “don’t spill all your candy in the lobby”. Save some for later. Next time, I’ll post some suggestions on what to say and do when someone finally says “sure, we’d like some of that there photography, why dontcha drop by Friday?”

I was in Los Angles working over the weekend. Spent a day at the Salton Sea with my good friend Angela Marklew who has a great selection of images from a place I like but, have never been able to get any great images of. Anyway, we got to talking about finding new work and, like I always do, got pretty crazed about all the ways and opportunities there are for a photographer to find work. She suggested I should put together some sort of workshop for photographers on marketing and, after mulling it over for a day or two, I think this is a great idea. In the meantime, I’ll share some quick ideas.

My work is roughly divided between commercial end user clients and editorial work. So, I spend my time marketing to these types of targets and in short, my business development is done like this:

Email - I maintain a list of photo editors, art buyers etc. and send out emails roughly four times a year to about 6000 individuals updating them on new work, sending links to slide shows of specific projects and generally just trying to increase or maintain interest in the travel stock that is available for license directly off my site.

Mailings - Good old fashioned postcards. For the most part, these are directed specifically to potential commercial clients. In my part of the country, this means oil and gas companies and their related service and equipment suppliers. I also send out a larger promo once a year to companies I want to work for and keep adding to (and occasionally dropping) names from this list all the time.

Direct Selling - Work them phones! Take a public speaking course, take a sales course, take a Valium, whatever you need to do to be able to confidently pick up the phone and make personal contact with potential clients. Ask who is in charge of commissioning photography and ask that person if you could have fifteen minutes of their time to show your work and find out more about how you could fit their photography needs. 9 out of ten times, you’ll get the blow off, but if you get 1 out of ten and 10% of those turns into work, making 100 calls a week will make you a photographer too busy to make calls six months from now.

Follow up, follow up again, and keep following up. Track everything, use Outlook (or similar contact manager) to keep notes on every conversation with every potential client you talk to. Ask them if you can follow up again in a couple of months, develop a rapport and maintain that rapport, be sincere, be honest and above all, be persistent. I don’t mean pushy, I don’t mean aggressive but, make it clear you really want to work for that client and that you’re going to do whatever it take to stay on their radar. You’ll be surprised how often this eventually turns into a job, or a referral to another potential client.

So, where do I get all these leads and ideas to market to? I’ll give you a rundown of this next post. They’re calling my flight and I can’t wait to get out of LA and back to -20 and snow in Calgary.

What is it about big, heavy, pro cameras that make people automatically assume you’re up to something nefarious? BBC News is running a story today about police stopping and searching hobbyist photographers HERE. I’ve been the victim of this myself. I regularly get stopped in the US and some foreign countries and asked why I’m taking pictures of something. In some cases, while others are standing around with cell phone cameras happily snapping away without so much as a glance.

It’s time for a little common sense lesson. First, if I’m taking pictures of something that I want to blow up, why would I do it with a huge SLR and glowing white Canon 70-200? You stand out like a sore thumb and trust me, toting around two of ‘em and a camera bag full of lenses in the hot sun all day will make you forget whatever cause you were fighting for in a real hurry. Second, why would I bother spending ten grand on all this kit, just to lose it in the ensuing explosion? Third, camera phones and point and shoots have, for the most part, much longer digital zooms than what most pro shooters generally carry around and, they’re smaller, more compact and much more easy to use secretly. Lastly, what the hell do the authorities think a terrorist is going to do with pictures of Buckingham Palace anyway? No one ever gets stopped writing down notes on the street and honestly, if I was going to create some sort of attack plan, I’d rather sit in front of the place and make notes and sketches than snap a pic. Ever look at Google Earth? Way more info there than you’ll ever get from taking pics out front. Besides, head down to your local bookstore and you can probably find the blueprints to Buckingham Palace in the remainder bin for $1.99.

The sad truth is, it’s easy to target people that are doing something differently than everyone else and harass them. The authorities can sleep at night knowing they’re doing at least “something” even if that something is a ridiculous waste of time and resources. Maybe it sends some kind of message to the real bad guys but, I think the message may be “keep doing what you’re doing, we’re busy harassing some grandmother taking pics of here grand kids in front of the Old Bailey”.

Interestingly, on a recent trip to China (a communist country, tightly controlled by the government) no one gave this 200 lb, 6′ tall white guy with $20 grand worth of pro camera gear hanging off of him so much as a second glance. Not the police (snapped ‘em) not the military (they actually posed), not even the demonstrators at a Falun Gong rally (they actually had their friends snap pics of me posing with them).

As a freelance photographer, there’s a million opportunities out there to do Pro Bono (read; free) work. The most popular thing you’ll run into is “we’re not paying for this assignment but, we’ll give you a photo credit. Besides, the exposure’s great”. Ever try eating a photo credit? How about getting your next camera by telling the camera shop “Give it to me for free and I’ll tell everyone where I got the camera and it’ll be great exposure for you”. Nope, the only people that go for this are photographers who define the word naive. Or photographer’s that are still living with their parents.

I still get approached with this once in a while and always decline, as politely as I can. Think about it, a Canon 1D MKIII costs about $4500, my business insurance (commercial liability, theft and damage) costs about $2000 a year to cover this camera against damage. Drop the camera while shooting something for “a photo credit” and my deductible is $1000. So, while shooting an assignment for free, I ruin a camera and now, it’s cost me $1000 out of pocket. If you knew shooting something for exposure would cost you a grand, would you still shoot it? Is it really worth the risk?

Having said that, I actually do Pro Bono work. Now, this is a dicey area. Namely because there are tons of great photographers out there like Jamie Rose who make part of their living from shooting for NGO’s and other charitable organizations and shooting this stuff for free would eliminate income opportunities for you and other shooters in the future. Besides, many of these NGO’s have huge budgets for marketing and the Marketing Manager, the printer, the media outlets and everyone else involved is certainly getting paid so, why shouldn’t you? I’ve done work for foreign NGO’s for pay and, I typically donate a week or two a year to generating imagery for groups that could not otherwise pay for it and have no budget or paid marketing campaigns and only if there’s something in it for me and my business. I know that sounds a little harsh but, let me give you an example. I recently approached a local homeless shelter about creating a series of images for them to use as part of a marketing campaign. I won’t bore you with the details but, it’s an exciting idea, has a lot of impact and, executed properly, will raise a lot of awareness for the organization in question. So, why would I do it for free? Well, firstly, it’s my idea and I went to them with it. Second, they’d never be able to pay the kind of money I’d charge to do this so, I’m not shorting myself or another photographer. Third, most of the major corporations in my city make this organization their number one charity to support in the city. So, if the images are a success, the campaign runs and generates a lot of buzz as something new and I’ve done my job, people will want to know who shot the images. Including the companies that work with them and are potentially my clients. It’s an all around “win/win”. The organization gets some high impact imagery to use in marketing and to raise funds and I add some unique work to my portfolio and potentially generate interest in my skills among some high profile commercial clients which, could eventually turn into new work. If it doesn’t, that’s OK because what I’m shooting here is unique and I think it’s important to contribute something to a worthwhile cause when you can.

This image is the first in the series I’m doing for them. We’re shooting another one tonight and I’ll post it sometime in the near future. Now I have to go put a sticky note on my bag that says “DO NOT DROP CAMERA”